


1 Peter 5:7

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Death, F/M, M/M, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5013157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life and times of Kotomine Kirei. Relationships that come and go and a certain blonde asshole. Modern au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1 Peter 5:7

**Author's Note:**

> Leave all your worries with him, because he cares for you.  
> \- 1 Peter 5:7 (GNTD)

The summer Kirei turned ten his father took him on a pilgrimage: We walk on the paths God set before us, we suffer with the weight of our sins and only through devotion and blood are we cleansed. Kirei remembers the long dirt roads that they walked, the way the journey wore out the soles of their shoes and the way bloodied footprints gathered dust and darkened in the still air. His father had a second awakening, the pain and exhaustion brought him closer to God and on the seventh day of their walk he drew Kirei down to the ground with him to kneel in the vast openness of nature.

“God is in everything, my will is His will. My life, His life.”

And Kirei? He felt nothing. This is one of his most important memories, because the blankness that welled up in his soul that day was heavier than the rocks they had carried and greater than the sins they cleansed themselves of each morning in the cold river water. God had never answered him.

\+ + +

The summer Kirei turned fifteen, his father introduced him to a boy named Tokiomi Tohsaka. A family friend. A bright young man with a talent for crafting intricate watches, jewelry and pretending that he came from old money. It was easy enough to tell that he wasn’t — Tokiomi was a recent heir, still unused to the difference between flashy finery and elegant worth. What he lacked in genuine value he made up for in enthusiasm, at least.

But he was an idiot.

Kirei’s father hoped that they would get along and Kirei, the ever-dutiful son, made sure that they did. Talking to Tokiomi was just as fruitful as talking to God — but Tokiomi replied to him. The emptiness inside Kirei was never sated, but it found some footing in the fact that Tokiomi was delighted by him.

“A truly trustworthy man, someone I would be happy to call a friend.” Tokiomi announced, on the last day of his vacation.

“It’s been a pleasure to meet you.” Kirei said.

\+ + +

Four years after meeting Tokiomi, Kirei found that he couldn’t confess that he never felt the will of God. He went, twice, to confession to admit that he felt abandoned by Him but each time instead spoke of the guilt he felt over something he didn’t do for his father, over not being able to be perfect, over his decision to, perhaps, pursue law enforcement over the clergy.

Each time he felt more the liar and the fraud.

It wasn’t something he could tell his father either, so he planned to drive his car into the lake. The ice was just thin enough it should break under the car’s weight, but thick enough that it could be just seen as a tragic accident.

It seemed fitting, a tragic accident. He hoped that his father would find meaning in his death.

On the drive to the lake he followed the cattle path down and standing in the shallows of the water was a girl around his age. Her hair was white as snow and her lips blue with cold and he could see her boots and coat piled up on the lake shore.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“I’m going to die from cancer. It’s inoperable.” She replied and stepped further into the lake. The ice was thinner than he expected, it parted before her skinny legs.

“Don’t give up hope,” Kirei didn’t reach out to stop her though.

She looked back at him and her eyes moved from his face to his car and then up to the sky.

“Maybe God sent you to me,” she said and fell backwards into the icy water.

\+ + +

He was a hero at age 19.

A year later he married the girl he saved.

Two years and ten months later she died.

\+ + +

It’s on the fifth anniversary of Claudia’s death that Kirei’s father gets a stroke. It doesn’t kill him, but leaves half his face paralyzed and his breath only comes in wheezes and sometimes his good eye tracks in a left to right pattern seeking something that Kirei’s never seen to begin with.

Keep faith, his father says, everything happens for a reason.

Kirei dreams of strangling his father, bloody footprints in the snow and Claudia’s cold embrace.

\+ + +

It’s unusual to meet someone else in the graveyard. It’s not exactly a popular place to hang out, especially not in February when the skies are gray and the air is filled with cold mist that hits the skin like tiny daggers. It’s Valentine’s Day, too, which is why Kirei is there — he brings flowers for Claudia’s grave every anniversary and every Valentine’s Day because it seems appropriate. She would probably have appreciated it.

But there he is.

Audacious to the point of painful to look at. Wearing more jewelry than any one man should own — Kirei only lays claim to a pair of earrings, his wedding ring and his father’s crucifix. Something about the stranger reminds Kirei of the vast open plains of farmland that sometimes had wheat and sometimes had been robbed of all the fertile land, but looked gold nonetheless.

“Yo, come here often?”

“To see my wife.” Kirei has to reply, waves towards her grave with the bouquet of flowers in his hand.

“The dead don’t care if we come or not,” he laughs with too many teeth and in a way that makes his jewelry jangle. Then he shoves his hands into the pockets of his tacky fur coat.

“There must be a reason why you’re here,” Kirei counters, evenly.

“Shouldn’t it be obvious?”

“No, good day to you.” Kirei sets the flowers down and turns to leave. He gets seventeen steps away when the stranger sidles up next to him, a flower pulled from the bouquet in his hand. He’s wearing cologne, something with sandalwood and notes of cinnamon — but way too much of it, and it smells cheap.

“I’m here to meet you, obviously.”

But his voice cracks and that’s when Kirei makes note of him. If anything, the church has helped Kirei be attuned to how people wear their suffering. His father wrapped it around himself like armor, held it close as a blunt edge to keep moving forward. Grief nearly destroyed Tokiomi, who was not nearly as emotionally solid as he ever wished to be. Kirei — he was haunted, but not entirely sure it was grief that burdened him. _This_ man, however, held his grief like an old friend and a knife, kept sharp and mourning and ready to take on the world.

Something stirs inside Kirei.

“It’s cold, perhaps you could use something hot to drink.” Kirei offers.

\+ + +

The summer Kirei turns thirty, Gilgamesh has made himself comfortable in his life. There’s signs of him all around the house — clothing strewn about, books tossed aside, food and wine bottles left out. Gilgamesh takes anything that catches his eye but often discards it only minutes later, immediately bored once the novelty wears off.

He has told Kirei, on numerous occasion, that Kirei was supposed to be similar. Pick up a priest in a graveyard, what a great set up for a joke, Gilgamesh says.

But he stays.

\+ + +

“You’ve never been with a man, hmmm?” Gilgamesh teases, because Kirei balks at the idea of sharing a bed. “Did you know there is such a wide spectrum of pleasure to be had that really, placing it inside such _tiny_ boundaries seems preposterous.” It isn’t a question.

Kirei’s answer, however, is that sex isn’t enjoyable. Gilgamesh thinks that it’s something an impotent man would say but it soon turns out that even Gilgamesh’s bragged about bedroom prowess is enough to make Kirei roll over and fall asleep.

What should frustrate Gilgamesh only seems to intrigue him: “Everyone wants something, Kirei, we just have to find out what you want.”

\+ + +

It starts as a joke — Gilgamesh buys one of those off the beaten path kinky pornos because it’s funny and because he knows Kirei will disapprove. He uses Kirei’s money for it and puts it in and laughs when Kirei’s face goes from stoic to annoyed to something else.

Gilgamesh thinks it might be shock.

But later in bed Kirei’s cheeks are flushed and his hands are far too eager and Gilgamesh thinks that he’s finally made a breakthrough. It’s only natural that Kirei’s nails leave furrows in his skin and that his kisses are bruising — he’s learning from Gilgamesh, after all, and Gilgamesh doesn’t indulge in softness too often.

It’s only when Kirei’s fingers drop from caressing his cheek to wrapping around his throat that Gilgamesh feels satisfaction boil over into rage. “Don’t you even _dare_.” He hisses out, back stiff with not only anger but the sudden realization that Kirei outweighs him, that Kirei definitely knows how to break a man’s neck and that the heady glazed look in Kirei’s eyes is unfamiliar.

His pulse quickens and he knows Kirei can feel it.

“Excitement and pleasure, isn’t that what you’re always after?” Kirei asks. Gilgamesh can’t deny it, not without undoing everything else he’s said and he won’t be hypocritical — not about the pursuit of desire. Not at the only thing he cares about left in the world.

“Ha! Is this what gets you off? How perverse! Fine,” Gilgamesh laughs, forces the air from his lungs and even tilts his head further back. “Then show me the strength of your desire.”

Kirei hesitates and Gilgamesh pries the fingers off of his throat.

“That was almost amusing, Kirei, but it turns out that you’re not ready to embrace who you truly are.”

Not yet.

\+ + +

On Valentine’s Day they both go to Claudia’s grave and Kirei pretends he doesn’t notice Gilgamesh making a slight detour to an unmarked gravestone just outside the gate. Gilgamesh tries to burrow into Kirei’s coat, because the February winds are bitter and Kirei lets him.

The dead don’t care if they come or not and it isn’t that that he’s freed by but rather the idea that he’s standing there at the grave of his dead wife with a truly reprehensible man. Kirei tilts Gilgamesh’s face up to his own and kisses him.

It’s Gilgamesh who breaks the kiss first, something in his expression is bitter and tragic and Kirei can’t help but laugh. It’s the first time he’s laughed in what seems like lifetimes — the sound even surprises Gilgamesh.

“What a holy man you’ve turned out to be,” Gilgamesh smirks, but his hands have found their ways to his pockets again and his eyes keep sliding off to the distance. He looks brittle, held up only by his pride and Kirei wants to kiss him again.

“I’ve had an epiphany.” Kirei keeps laughing, though and when he starts the walk back to the car he extends his hand for Gilgamesh to take.

Not yet, but soon.


End file.
